RUSH: They’re getting worried over at CNN. They can’t hide this anymore. They can’t pretend that we’re in some kind of “recovery” here. This is this morning on Starting Point. That’s the Soledad O’Brien show. She had on the business and economics correspondent, Christine Romans, and they had a chat about the economy.
O’BRIEN: Rattled nerves sending the markets around the world lower, triggering fears of a double-dip recession right here in the United States after Moody’s downgraded 15 of the world’s biggest banks.
ROMANS: It was a really ugly day.
O’BRIEN: Yes, it was.
ROMANS: The second worst day for stocks in the country this year. When you have people worried, talking about a slowing global economy and what that’s gonna mean for banks, it just caused all kinds of concern. We’ve got contagion from Europe we’re concerned about. We’re worried about slowing numbers from China, from Europe — from Germany in particular. Uh, we had all kinds of macroeconomic data yesterday that was starting to show what many people have feared: That the global economy is slowing down. When it slows down, that means American factories are selling fewer things. It means American business owners are not hiring people because they’re worried about the global slowdown. It starts to feed on itself.
RUSH: She’s just now figuring this out, but at least they’re figuring it out. They’re late to the party on this, but at least they’re figuring it out. It’s not just “the global slowdown.” Small businesses on Main Street are looking at the fact they don’t have any customers. The heck with Germany and Europe! They don’t have any customers. There’s no reason to expand or hire anybody. And they don’t know what’s coming. They don’t know what’s coming with health care. They don’t know if Obama is going to get reelected. If he does, they know it’s disaster. Why invest the money now? We’re in the midst of paralysis here.
So after hearing that, Soledad O’Brien is scared to death. She wants to know if this means that we are headed for a double dipper.
OÂ’BRIEN: Does that mean then, yes, a double-dip recession?
ROMANS: We can’t say right now there will be a double-dip recession. We just know that growth is slowing around the world and that is the big fear. WeÂ’ve got other things going on, the fiscal cliff is looming, debt ceiling stuff thatÂ’s going to be coming up, political problems around the world. When there’s prosperity, politics is not quite so dangerous. But when you don’t have prosperity, the politics become that much more important. So many things to worry about. I can make a list of all these things to worry about and maybe two things you don’t have to worry about. So that’s where we are in the middle of the summer.
RUSH: They’re not happy, folks. They’re very concerned, very concerned. That’s CNN. Double-dip recession. What happened to the recovery talk?
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